How to optimise your website for accessibility

Start with structure, not styling

One of the most common mistakes we see is treating accessibility as a visual problem. In reality, it starts with structure.

A well-structured website uses clear page hierarchies, logical headings, and predictable layouts. This is essential for people using screen readers, but it also helps search engines understand your content and helps all users scan pages more efficiently.

Why this matters for your organisation:
Clear structure reduces cognitive load. Users find what they need faster, bounce rates drop, and content performs better in search. It also means future updates are cheaper and quicker, because your content isn’t held together by fragile visual workarounds.

A practical tip: review a key page with all styling turned off. If it still makes sense as a linear piece of content, you’re on the right track. If not, accessibility issues are likely hiding beneath the surface.

Build accessibility into your processes, not just your launch

Accessibility isn’t a one-off task. It’s an ongoing practice that spans content creation, design, development, and governance.

This means training teams to write accessible content, setting standards for components, and checking new features before they go live. Automated tools can catch obvious issues, but they’ll never replace human judgement or testing with real users.

Why this matters for your organisation
Embedding accessibility into your workflow reduces risk. You’re less likely to face expensive retrofits, reputational damage, or legal challenges. It also signals maturity to users, partners, and internal teams, showing that your organisation takes inclusion seriously.

One opinion we hold strongly is that accessibility ownership should never sit with a single person. The most successful teams treat it as a shared responsibility, supported by clear guidelines and leadership buy-in.

Design for real people, not edge cases

Accessibility is often framed as designing for a small minority. In practice, it’s about designing for reality.

Think about your users: they may be tired, stressed, on a mobile device in bright sunlight, or juggling multiple tasks. Accessible design principles such as sufficient colour contrast, readable text sizes, and clear calls to action directly support these scenarios. Just look at the Fight for Sight website we recently worked on. Does it feel as though ease of use has been sacrificed to make space for greater accessibility? Hopefully you’ll agree it’s an example of a website that is accessible and also easy to digest at speed.

Why this matters for your organisation:
Improved readability and clarity lead to higher engagement and fewer errors. That means fewer support queries, stronger conversion rates, and better outcomes from your digital investment.

A real-world insight from our own projects: we’ve seen stakeholders push back on increasing text size because it “doesn’t fit the brand”. Yet after making those changes, session duration increased and form completion errors dropped significantly. Accessibility improvements often pay for themselves in performance gains.

Accessibility is a growth strategy, not a constraint

Optimising your website for accessibility is about future-proofing. It improves usability, supports SEO, strengthens your brand, and ensures your digital platforms work for the widest possible audience.

If you’re planning a redesign, launching new functionality, or simply want to understand where your current site may be falling short, accessibility is the smartest place to start.

If you’d like help auditing your website, improving accessibility as part of a redesign, or embedding best practice into your digital strategy, explore our services or speak to our team about an accessibility-focused review. We’d be happy to help you turn good intentions into measurable results.